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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

On the supposed victory...

"Political liberalism has no quarrel at all with wealth and power. It timidly exhorts the wealthy and powerful to play nice; but if they don't choose to take liberalism's advice, then liberalism sighs, and wrings its hands, and murmurs something about being "realistic."

I laughed out loud when I read this. See this is the way the "liberals" in congress and our Democratic leadership choose to deal with problems in our country. Take the banking issue for example, Obama has asked them to stop engaging in fraud, but he wont make them do it. He has asked the drug companies to make drugs more affordable for people, but he wont punish them if they don’t. He says he wants a viable public option, but he wont commit to anything. He wont use the government to enforce the will of the people, because, you know, that would be rude. He will just ask nicely, and if he doesn’t get it, he will "sigh, wring his hands, and murmur something about being realistic."

So it’s really no surprise that our healthcare bill turned out to be such a piece of shit. Lets start out with the positive. It does require insurance companies to accept people on to their rolls who currently have no insurance. It also has some subsidies for buying drugs and other things. And more people will join Medicaid. But all of this is out weighed by several facts. First of all, if you are pro-choice, you should know that access to abortion would be decreased. Also if you happen to work at Wal-Mart and already have a shitty plan, you HAVE TO KEEP IT. But what about the Public Option? Well, they gutted that as well. The so-called "public option" can only enroll about 6 million, which means that it can’t compete with private insurers and therefore cant bring down costs. The CBO says it won’t be any better than private insurance. There is also the individual mandate, which forces people to buy private insurance. Lots of people cant afford insurance right now, so one would think that if the government forced you to buy insurance it would make sure you could afford it, right? Nope, it will still eat up a huge portion of your income.

So we end up with insurance companies getting a captive consumer base, as well as government subsidies, therefore increasing their power. Regular people will spend more money on insurance and probably no get better care. There is no viable public option, and it doesn’t bring us any closer to Single-Payer. This is an insurance company bailout bill. Sanders should filibuster this crap.